Codecademy Raises $10 Million To Conquer The World

Codecademy, a ten-month-old startup that offers free online computer programming lessons, announced today that it's raised a $10 million round of venture financing led by Index Ventures and joined by Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures, Yuri Milner and Richard Branson. The company, run by CEO Zach Sims and CTO Ryan Bubinski, both 22, previously raised $2.5 million in November 2011. The previous round of funding was led by Union Square Ventures and joined by SV Angel, CrunchFund, Thrive Capital, Yuri Milner, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and others.

After launching Codecademy during the tail end of Y Combinator's 2011 summer program, Sims and Bubinski stayed up for nearly three days in order to keep up with traffic - the website attracted 200,000 users within 72 hours of launching. On January 1st, the company launched their Code Year promotion, drawing another 200,000 students in seven days, including New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (See graph below). Codecademy now claims "millions" of students who have collectively completed over 50 million interactive exercises. Since opening up the website for course creation in February, 25,000 people have created their own programming lessons.

As head of the nine-person company, Sims described his team's current workload as "definitely overwhelming" and expects to double or triple the size of the company over the course of the next year. Though he says that Codecademy did not need the money, looming macreconomic uncertainty and the opportunity for rapid international expansion eventually persuaded him to accept the funding.

Because half the company's users live outside of the U.S., Codecademy chose to work with an international set of venture partners. Index Ventures is headquartered in Geneva while Kleiner Perkins maintains a strong presence in China. Billionaires Richard Branson and Yuri Milner run international business empires.

The company's international outlook apparently applies to recruitment as well. When I spoke with Sims he had just returned from Helsinki, fresh from recruiting the newest member of the Codecademy team. A jaunt to a Finnish sauna with the new employee's family helped seal the deal. "When we see someone we like, whether on the edge of the earth, or in Helsinki, we go and get them," he said.

Commenting on his firm's investment in the company, Saul Perkins of Index Ventures reflected, "My thesis is that 21st century parents should teach their kids three languages: English, Mandarin and coding. Software is so much a part of our lives to today that this is just a fundamental skill that people need."

Though many will likely question the wisdom of giving two 22 year-olds a total of $12.5 million, Klein expressed no reservations. "I’ve spent six or seven hours at a time with these guys and not once did I think about the fact that they're 20 years younger than me," he insisted. "They are preternaturally mature."